I should tell you about our current pets before anything else ... first off, theres our dog ...

Jake ...

... Jake was a rescue dog - I met him when I started seeing Corinne.

What she hadn't told me was that he was petrified of eveybody and eveything and had a nervous habit of chewing anything that wasn't nailed down (and a few things that were).

She also neglected to mention that she had a flight booked back to Canada (booked before we met, I hasten to add) and, although she thought our relationship was going pretty well, she had decided (like you sometimes have to) that if the dog didn't get along with me, she was on that flight.

So, and it did seem odd to me at the time that I got given the keys to open the door while Corinne 'sorted' things out in the alcove where they kept boots and stuff, I opened the door and went in a good 30 seconds before Corinne ...

... when Corinne came in Jake and I were having a hug ... we've been buddies ever since.

I've never been directly involved with training or looking after a dog before (I've always had the fun of playing with other peoples - and none of the responsibilies) so I've had quite a learning curve to slide to the bottom of, time and time again.

There have been a few things I've done wrong, to encourage Jake not to jump on Corinne after she had a knee operation, I would keep him in a seperate room while I slept, part of the 'mollycoddling' process to counteract his 'I want to be with momma' whimpering, was to cuddle him on the bed ... even today, I regularly wake up with a smelly dog under the covers :(

As I mentioned, Jake is a rescue dog, so he has a few foibles, we were told he had spent the first two years of his life locked in a kitchen in the Midlands, which goes some way to explain his reaction to seeing the sea for the first time ...

He's now pretty confident in lakes and rivers (especially if there is a younger dog to impress) but he still doesn't trust that massive salty smelling puddle that keeps chasing him!

Bob - Our Cat

Our cat - Bob was never supposed to be with us, he was from a litter of four that was the result of a family member (who I will not mention ... to protect the guilty) not having their cat spayed as soon as they should have!

We managed to place the female kitten with a friend, but despite our efforts, we ended up having to keep the three male cats ... joy ensued!

There was Taylor, the biggest and toughest of them (and Corinne's favourite) ... then there was JR (Just Runt) who, well, was the runt of the litter, all legs, skin and bone, and finally Bob, who made it really difficult not to keep him by being really cute ...

now there is only one :(
JR died, one moment he was on top of the shed roof (I saw him when I parked up the car) by the time I had opened the gate and walked up the path, he was gone ... when we spoke to vet about it later, he asked if JR had always been thirsty as the runt of the litter, and he explained that many runts have badly developed organs and JR probably died from liver failure ... sad, but these things happen.

Taylor was a sadder affair, he just didn't come home one evening :(
We searched everywhere, put up signs, knocked on doors and checked all the authorities, nothing.

Bob is a bit mental ... he also is the most agile cat I have ever come across, he seems to sense things moving around him, the downside of having a rather athletic and frankly bordering on the psychic cat is that he has a habit of bringing us little feathery gifts from around the local area

We have nursed numerous sparrows, blackbirds and thrushes, but our greatest success story involves 'Pidge' the pigeon (ok, its not a very original name, but having named birds before, only to find out later the name was no appropriate ... Leonard the Sparrow for example, who turned out to be more of a Leona, we erred on the side of caution this time ...

Pidge was about 3 days old (his eyes were still closed!) when we had him deposited on our living room floor by a very happy cat ... this, he was sure, would be worth a whole tin of tuna to himself ...

Initially, after googling like crazy (and speaking to the vet on the phone) we thought it unlikely that Pidge would survive, it appeared that it was difficult to get them to feed from you, and also being so young, he was unlikely to have picked up any of the immunities they get from feeding from their parents crop (pigeons and doves produce a type of milk for their young).

... as you can see, he survived, we made a fake crop out of stuff we found in the kitchen, old rubber glove, string, elastic bands etc, we ground up seeds and added vitamins and chalk - and fed him ... and boy did he eat!

We've had a plethora of other rescue animals ... some as a result of our evil Bob, but many we have found, and others that had been brought to Corinne, once the neighbours realised she had a knack of nursing that most of us lack.
 

• Mouse Mouse
• Pidge Pidge
• Meep Meep
• Stinky The Hedgehog Stinky The Hedgehog
• Meep The Blackbird Meep The Blackbird
• Rescue Rook Rescue Rook
• Sparrow Sparrow
• Sparrow Sparrow
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